


Exactly the people they need

by hesychasm (Jintian)



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-15
Updated: 2007-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-29 20:32:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/323898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jintian/pseuds/hesychasm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyra and Jason in New York.  Written during Season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exactly the people they need

  
She still hasn't quite settled into the routine, even a month after venturing into this strange and thrilling new stage of domestic partnership. And it's because the domestic partner in question has routines just a little more elaborate than others: the reason Tyra wakes up an hour before her alarm every morning is that for Jason, getting out of bed requires props and coordination and not a small amount of cursing under his breath, especially since it's still cold enough in their tiny apartment for chilled, crampy muscles. He's got it down to a few swift movements, true, but it's still never going to be quick and graceful. The mattress moves, sometimes he inadvertently drags the comforter with him, sometimes the wheelchair rolls back and bangs against the night table.

He stopped apologizing for waking her up after the second time, when she'd simply smiled, crawled across the expanse of bed he'd just vacated, and straddled his lap. "Good morning," she said, and "Good morning," he said back, smiling too, and then she kissed and rocked into him, his fingers curling up under her thin tanktop and rubbing between her legs, until her alarm finally did go off just as she hit the tail-end of a warm morning orgasm.

"God _damn_ , that was good timing," she breathed into his neck, still smelling of sleep and brand new starchy sheets, and they both collapsed into giggles.

Nowadays the wake-up sex is a little less frequent: he has his routine, five blocks and back to get the morning paper at the neighborhood bodega, forty-five minutes of weight-training in the living area, then into the shower, sometimes joining Tyra, sometimes -- if he spent time chatting at the bodega earlier, as is more likely -- just giving her a light smack on the ass as she passes him on the way back to the bedroom.

She's the type who likes to sleep until the last possible minute, so that interrupted hour is crucial lost time. Once awakened, listening to Jason move around, it's hard to do anything but doze fitfully and wait for the alarm to drag her from the warm layers of the bed. Then it's a dash into her day, pulling on the business casual she still hasn't finished paying off, a quick goodbye to Jason in the shower, then down to the street, ducking the early spring wind. She'll usually feel the lost sleep later in the morning when the early hustle has died down and things are just dragging toward the lunch hour.

New York is not what she'd thought it would be, starkly lacking in the glitter and glamor, and it makes her feel small in a way the big land and sky of Texas never did. Asphalt and concrete, trash in the gutters and the subway, the stink, the loud trains, the press of anonymous bodies and people not making eye contact. But still, she loves the _difference_ of it, the way everyday something will happen to shake her out of herself, even if it's just an asshole snapping at her on the sidewalk. It's a new asshole every time, and maybe she's still starry-eyed by the whole big city thing, but it's the _newness_ that stays with her most of all. There was never anything new like that in Dillon.

So it's strange, then, that she ran all the way to New York and ended up living with Jason Street. She'd thought at first that maybe it was weakness that drew her to him, feeling lonely, turning to the one familiar face she had. It was because of him that she'd come to New York to begin with -- he'd gotten out first, broken into the bigger world when his game finally became good enough to take him elsewhere. And she'd just been looking for a place to run, a way to finally make good on all the threats she'd thrown at her mother, all the promises she'd made to herself.

It had seemed like weakness, because he was part of her past, someone she'd grown up with but not someone she'd ever thought she could do _more_ growing up with. He was good enough as an old friend with a couch to crash on, good enough to share some beers with and meet his rugby teammates and go to a game or two and say, "Wow, look at you, you're like a totally different person, Jay," and marvel at how happy he looked, how _changed_. But beyond that, the whole _point_ of being here was to cut herself loose. To for once stop circling the same sad, tired territory. She had her own changing to do, after all.

Still, they were connected. He helped her get a job, working as a receptionist for the brother of one of his teammates because no way in hell was she going to waitress another day in her life, helped her find two girls in need of another roommate, taught her how to deal with the subways and taxis and laughed at her whenever she got pissed at someone's New York rudeness. Once she moved out of his place it was surprisingly hard to go from seeing him every single day to barely seeing him at all, so she kept in touch. She hung out with him at the team's favorite bar, took him with her to explore the rest of the city on weekends, his wheelchair making the crowds part around him and holding up the cars at intersections, an occasional movie night or a meal ordered in. She reflected that he'd always been the best person she knew in Dillon, and he was still the best person she knew, period.

They didn't talk about Dillon much, though. Just once, when they'd both been a little drunk, her sitting on his lumpy couch with the credits to _The Last Picture Show_ scrolling on his TV, him a few feet away in his chair. He'd turned to her and said, "So, do you still keep in touch with Riggins?"

She took a sip of her beer, her hand a little shaky. "Nope. Left him a message once when I got my new phone, just so he'd have my number. He never called back."

Jason gave her one of his famous crooked grins. "He was always so stupid about you."

"You're tellin' me." She met his eyes. "What about you? You ever talk to him?"

"Nope."

"Yeah, well, he was pretty stupid about you, too."

Jason reached over and clinked the neck of his beer bottle against hers. "Here's to good friends, livin' large in Texas."

She drank deep, but she wasn't drunk enough to ask him about Lyla. There was a flutter in her stomach, remembering Tim and the last time they'd spoken, how she'd said to him, a little defiantly, "I'm leavin' tomorrow. Don't tell me you've got nothin' to say about that." But he hadn't said anything at all, because he never gave her what she wanted with that. Just came up to her and put his big hands on her face and leaned in, and two hours later she was right back where she'd started with him, climbing out of his bed and wondering what in the fuck had gotten into her, didn't she know better than to sleep with a guy like Tim Riggins? Didn't she know exactly what he was like?

It made her feel disgusted, made her feel like she hadn't learned a goddamn thing about anything, sitting there with a _flutter_ in her stomach wondering what Tim was doing now, whether he was happy, whether he was thinking of her.

Jason was watching her. "It's hard," he said. "Hard to let go."

"You did it." And that was as close as she was going to get to talking about Lyla Garrity.

He shrugged. "It helps when you've got something else to fill your life with. You know? When it's not all just one person. One dream."

She'd tried to follow him on that, honest to God had tried. She'd branched out, dated a little, tried to do things other than just going to work, going to the bar, coming home. She made friends of her roommates, sat down and watched their TV shows with them, invited them out shopping, let them cry on her shoulder when they had boyfriend problems. She met their friends, met her co-workers' friends, tried to fill her life with people and conversations that were about _today_ , _tomorrow_ , not yesterday.

But still, she found that her life kept coming back to Jason. He had that effect on people anyway: he'd always been magnetic, a natural leader, one of those guys people would have flocked to even if he'd never been QB1. The careful distance of platonic friendship didn't make her immune to that. And maybe it _was_ just that he was in the right place at the right time for her, but even all the newness and difference of New York couldn't cough up a guy who had quite the light in him that Jason did. She couldn't have done anything _but_ fall for him.

Her roommates went home for Thanksgiving, and neither she nor Jason planned to go home, so she offered to cook for the both of them. He'd laughed. "O-kay. Guess I better stock up on the Pepto and the Tums, then."

"Oh, hush. The things I can do with a turkey will stun and amaze you."

"Oh, _no_ she didn't." He went off into guffaws of laughter. "I can't believe you just said that."

"Ugh, you're such a jerk." But she was laughing, too.

He showed up with a sixpack of beer and a dorky bouquet of flowers, lightly dusted with snow. She tamped down on the flutter in her heart and steered him into the kitchen, bossing him into mashing the potatoes and mixing together the green bean casserole. He smiled the whole time and didn't even blush when she caught him checking out her ass. "Hey," he said, "I can't help what crosses my line of sight."

God, it was weird. All that history between them, all the reasons she was telling herself it was a horrible idea, didn't she know better than to get involved with guys like Jason Street? Didn't she know better than to go backwards like that? But she felt flushed with heat, and she couldn't quite meet his eyes, couldn't quite let their fingers touch when she handed him a can opener, heard her voice getting higher and higher as they bantered back and forth. _God_ , she was completely pathetic.

The sound of a glass shattering on the floor made her jump. She turned and saw Jason leaning over the side of his chair, picking up the pieces. "Shit, Tyra, I'm sorry," he was saying, "my hands just slipped."

"Let me get that," she said. "You don't want to cut yourself." She grabbed a dishtowel and knelt on the floor, sweeping the shards together.

"Tell your roommates I'll pay for it --"

"No big deal, it's just a glass." She looked up at him, smiling, wanting him to know it was really okay, because she knew that even years later he still hated it whenever something happened to remind him of his limitations.

And he was looking at her with something in his expression, some feeling he'd been hiding from her up until now, _not_ that she'd been wondering about it, dammit, not at all -- and suddenly her heart started slamming around inside her chest. "Tyra," he said.

She knelt there, scared out of her goddamn mind, feeling her ears burn as he reached out a hand and touched her hair.

"It's okay," he said. "If you don't want to."

She swallowed, finding her voice. "It's -- it's not that I don't want to. It's just." She couldn't put it into words. So many fights with her mother, so many times she'd tried to tell her the ways she should be dealing with men, and here she was dealing with one herself and she couldn't find the words.

He wasn't smiling, wasn't leaning into her, wasn't doing any of those things that had made countless rally girls and cheerleaders' panties spontaneously combust. He was completely, totally serious. "Tyra," he said. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I _wouldn't_."

It was the same tone of voice he'd used with her that night, when he'd told her to fill her life with something else besides one person, as matter of factly as if she hadn't tried and failed to do just that, time and time again. And yet all it made her want to do now was hold onto the person in front of her.

"Dammit," she whispered. He dropped his hand from her hair, but she caught it in hers and moved her face closer, lost her courage, then snatched it back and finished the forward motion, pressing her lips against his.

He tasted like the beer they'd been drinking, smelled like the snow outside, felt like a circle coming closed in her heart. The way he touched her, cradling her with his gnarled hands, the way he breathed her name and smiled into her kisses and showed her how to touch him back -- the way it wasn't like anything she'd ever done before --

It scared her then and it scares her now, how fast they keep moving. Four months ago she couldn't even acknowledge to herself what she was feeling; today, they're living together. She resists each big step right up until the point of taking it, and then inevitably she's the first one through, leading him behind her. That's the Jason Street effect, the power of a guy who never in his life recognized the concept of halfway, the power to change the people around him.

But it's also, she thinks, because he's just _Jason_ , the guy she grew up with, the guy who understands where she's coming from and consequently, where she can't let herself go. It scares her, but because of that she believes all of his promises, every single one.

*

"Coach Taylor's going to UT," Jason says, squinting at his laptop.

She looks up from the newspaper. It's a Sunday, and the paper is a day old, because this is the one day of the week they both sleep in.

"Guess when they sweetened the pot to assistant coach, he finally had to accept the offer." Jason's voice sounds a little awestruck.

"Dillon's probably self-imploding right about now," Tyra says.

"The boosters and alumni are gonna throw him a big goodbye thing at graduation."

"Huh." She flips to the editorial section.

"They want me to come out and give a little speech."

"The ink on your settlement is barely dry and they want you to come and give a _speech_ for him?"

He flashes that crooked grin. "Hey, Coach knew it wasn't personal."

"I will never understand football players," Tyra mutters.

He shuts the laptop down and wheels over to her, pulling the newspaper from her hands. "Want to come with me? They said they'll cover airfare, everything."

"Riiight."

"We can stay with my folks -- they won't mind."

She fixes him with a look. "Is this important to you? Because I know you wouldn't ask me something like that if it wasn't important to you."

"It's no more important to me than you being happy," he says. "And no more important than you want to make it."

That gets her, of course. She's never really articulated to herself whether she'd ever go back to Dillon. Mostly she's just been concentrating on moving forward. But her mom is still there. Her sister is still there. It's not like she can just turn her back on them for the rest of her life, even if all they can do is scream at each other. If she's learned anything from being with Jason, it's that there's always a part of her looking over her shoulder.

"We don't have to decide right away," Jason says. "They said we could have a week to RSVP."

He keeps using the word "we," like it's really a decision he wants to make _with_ her. Even though she can see it in his eyes, that the way Jason looks back is different from the way she does. He'd lost damn near everything that mattered to him in Dillon, had gotten out as soon as it was feasible and as far as she knows, hasn't been back since. But there's still a part of him that remembers and yearns for and loves those days when he was part of something bigger than himself, when he'd spoken a language of rules and plays and codes and had led a group of boys becoming men. It was why he'd gone straight from one community into another here, surrounding himself with a team all over again, because Jason was built to _be_ with people, to let them pull him up and to pull them up with him.

And the people of Dillon, of course, had been his first.

"I'll think about it," she says.

"Sure, okay." Nothing but patience with her, and she knows he'll go without her if she decides against it, and that neither of them will let it affect their relationship -- or they'll believe it won't. But still. There's that look in his eyes, that way of looking back that she wishes, a little, could be her own.

She waits until he leaves to get the Sunday paper before going out onto the fire escape, where her cell phone reception is slightly better. It's a little warmer today. She stands in a patch of sunlight in the corner, listening to the "brrrr brrrr" of the call trying to reach a person on the other end.

"Hello?"

Tyra swallows. "Hey, momma."

"Tyra? Oh, _honey_ , it's so good to hear your voice. Are you okay? It's been so long -- I been meaning to call you myself but I just --"

"Yeah, I know. It's okay." It's not, of course, and her voice is already wobbling, the tears are already springing to her eyes. But she hasn't called in a while either, and it takes two people to lose touch, two people to complete a circle. "I miss you."

"I miss you too, baby. Your sister told me about you and Jason. How y'all making out?"

"We're fine. We're really good." She sniffles. "We're pretty in love and it's -- it's good."

"Oh, I'm so glad. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy."

"We, uh, we're thinking about coming to Dillon in June. For Coach Taylor's thing."

"Really? It'll be so good to see you again! I can't believe you didn't even come home for Christmas."

"Yeah, I'm -- I'm sorry. I told you, I just didn't have the money."

This is the point where her mother usually starts in about New York being a huge mistake, how she can't understand why Tyra had to move all the way out there when she was making good money at the Applebee's, how she doesn't understand how Tyra could just leave her own mother and sister behind. This is the point where they usually start screaming at each other, and ten minutes later Tyra will shut her phone off, right in the middle of her mother's bitching, and fling it across the room.

But this time, her mother just says, "Well, I'll make sure and get your room ready. I was keeping some junk in there but I want it to be all nice and pretty for when you and Jason get here. I'll bet he needs room to get around in that wheelchair, too."

"Mom," Tyra says, shocked, "Jason can stay with his own parents."

"Oh, duh, right, of course he can. Well, in case he doesn't want to do that, you just tell him he's more than welcome here. Any boy you're with is more than welcome."

"Okay. I mean, we're still, we're still just thinking about it."

"Yeah?" Her mother's voice sounds a little smaller.

"But I mean," Tyra says quickly, "we'll probably. We just haven't gotten a chance to really talk about it yet."

"Tyra Collette, you and I both know you know all about getting your man to do what you want. So you just talk him into it, okay, hon? You tell him it's been way too long since you've seen your mother and you can't wait to get home."

And oh, _shit_ , now the tears are really coming down. She waits until she can get her voice steady enough so her mother can't tell. "Okay. I will," she says. "I'll try."

"Okay, babe. I love you. Hear me? I really do."

"Love you, too, momma."

"Miss you and I'll see you soon." And then her mother hangs up, and the phone is quiet in Tyra's hand.

She rests her elbows on the railing of the fire escape, wiping the tears away, looking down at the busy street below. She sees Jason wheeling down the sidewalk toward her, the Sunday paper and a bag of oranges in his lap. He smiles and nods at a few of the regulars on their block, the mothers with their kids playing baseball, the old men playing checkers. He looks up and catches her eye. He blows her a kiss.

She presses her fingers to her lips, holding the fluttering feeling inside, and kisses back.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and criticism welcome.


End file.
